


let's meet in the middle (and wait)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brooding, Gen, Ice Cream Parlors, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Tim Drake is Robin, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Jason was having a perfectly fine night, brooding atop roof-tops and contemplating the life he's created for himself - really, internal narration is his favorite thing.Unfortunately for him, Tim Drake - hisReplacement- chooses the same night to get ice cream at Gotham's notorious vigilante-themed ice cream shop.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 6
Kudos: 128





	let's meet in the middle (and wait)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Don't Try by Gerard Way! It's a great song, honestly. It encompasses the vibes of this fic. anyways I've read batman comics and decided they fucked up, so refuse to listen to them.

Jason came back wrong. He came back wrong, twisted, and  _ angry  _ \- he was the wayward son with the Lazarus Pit boiling in his veins next to his blood, overtaking it, shifting when he was angry. 

Mystic waters will do that, he supposed, but the lack of control over his body burned - from the black-outs in his memory to the phantom blood on his hands that he couldn’t remember. Not anything that made it to the news, that gave him the evidence to piece together what he did when he was under the Pit’s madness, but… 

But his anger would always win out. It didn’t matter what he did, it didn’t matter what he  _ didn’t  _ do; his anger would guide him until his heart stopped for the second time. 

Another curse to add to his name, he supposed, but sitting crouched on a seven-story Gotham rooftop wasn’t going to help anything other than his brooding side, and he liked to let the Bats keep one thing. 

Well,  _ Bat,  _ singular, Jason thought, far more bitter than he expected - but he had the right to be that way. The Bat got to walk around and patrol like everything was fine and okay and Jason was supposed to be in a coffin, six-feet-under. 

Maybe it  _ would  _ be normal if Jason was six-feet-under, but he wasn’t, and rage seethed through his veins like a poison, grinning and taunting the Lazarus Pit burning him up from the inside out.

One day, he’d lose his misguided fight. One day, he would give in to the black-outs and the need for a  _ fight  _ itching under his skin, under his ribs, in his  _ heart  _ where nothing ever survived. 

Sometimes, Jason wondered whether he was ever really alive at all. They’d never figured out what had brought him up from the grave, so maybe he  _ did  _ still have unfinished business, and that unfinished business was the only thing keeping him going. 

It would explain all the vengeance that set heavy in his ribs rather than lungs. Didn’t need those for anything more than breathing, and breathing was just another part of being alive, wasn’t it? 

Well, until he figured out what his purpose was, his heart was still beating and the Pit always reminded him of that; so he would take advantage of it, and not spend all goddamn night brooding. 

Really, he should be back at his apartment, licking his wounds. The gauze over his arm itched, sewn up all nice and pretty underneath. Or as pretty as stitches could be. Nothing he couldn’t handle, but with all the stress or something, he was bound to fuck it up. 

Patrol, though - it had sounded far more enticing than sitting at home, even if he couldn’t truly do anything tonight. Sometimes (a lot of the time), the sight of his helmet was more than enough to send Gotham’s criminals into hiding. 

And patrol ending up being really fucking boring. Really, godawful, boring, his helmet apparently enough to scare  _ everyone  _ off from the roof-tops, and now, that was just confusing.

He’d stopped one mugging, in three hours. 

It was  _ Gotham!  _ Someone was always being robbed or mugged or murdered - that much hadn’t changed over the years, loathe as Jason was to admit it, and it just wasn’t  _ Gotham  _ to stay quiet. 

Hell, he even entertained the idea that a new villain or magic-user of some sort had frozen time or most of the city before he entertained the notion that Gotham was truly at  _ peace,  _ if only for a night. 

It was Gotham. It wouldn’t last. But he could hope. 

And with that, he was sitting on the edge of one of the older buildings, probably a church of some sort; three stories with gargoyles next to him, and that goddamn cross above his head, with stained-glass windows underneath him. 

He was pretty sure those weren’t original. The entire church he was standing on had burned down in one of Dent’s disastrous Gotham escapades, the scarred silver dollar deciding the building needed to go, as well as all the occupants. 

Vaguely, he remembered finding a dog in the rubble. It had been alive, a pit bull - one he’d been surprised had been allowed in the church at all, remembering the stuffy priest who used to look after the place -, and Jason had hugged the damn dog to his chest, crying. 

The first time he cried on the job. 

Not the last time, though.

_ Being Robin gives me magic.  _

_ What hurts more, forward, or backward?  _

Jason swallowed back the bile rising in his throat, his knuckles tight enough around the building underneath him that he was sure something would give if he pushed just a little more. 

It wasn’t old concrete, not anymore, because of Dent, but that had been years ago and Gotham’s unrelenting weather hadn’t given the newly-rebuilt church any time to recover. Unsurprising, really, but Jason was struck by how the city never  _ changed.  _

He’d been part of the Dynamic Duo, once, and this church had been here, and so had the building across the street - the business had changed over the years, but it was always occupied. He’d been Robin, fighting villains with Batman. 

There was a new Robin, now, the  _ replacement  _ that Jason so loathed to think about. He was fighting the same damn villains with Batman, and Jason was sitting on the same damn roof with the same damn building across the street. 

Gotham never changed. 

Other cities adapted to the change, rolled with the punches, but Gotham stubbornly stood in the middle, perpetually locked in a cloudy haze of villains and vigilantes and morality, and the grime that just  _ wouldn’t  _ leave the streets, no matter how many times they were cleaned. 

_ Nothing ever changed, _

Jason had been doing the same thing as Dickface, when he’d been wearing the scaly green panties. Fighting the same villains, with B, and probably sat on this church too, long before Dent brought the place down. 

God, his head was starting to hurt; he wasn’t naive enough to think it was because he was tired. 

The Pit flared, and it flared, and it  _ always  _ ran up his veins when he was frustrated, when he was  _ angry,  _ but Jason had put his walls up a while ago and the Pit tried and tried to breach them, but it never worked. 

You know, after nearly murdering a child (replacement or not), the Pit had needed to go; Jason’s rampage needed to stop. He’d known that. Oh, if only he knew then what he knew now… 

Maybe he just needed ice cream or something. 

If he kept thinking about the replacement, about  _ his  _ replacement, then the pain would stab at his chest until he was clawing his way out of his own grave,  _ alone,  _ again, and that wasn’t the best way to end a Sunday night. 

Ice cream was far better. 

And there was an ice cream parlor down the road, one of the few in Gotham that never changed its menu and somehow managed to stay open - it was probably because it was a community hangout or whatever -, and Dick had taken him there, once. 

It hadn’t ended well. Dick was still mad at Bruce and wasn’t ready to accept Jason as anyone other than  _ his  _ replacement, his kid Bruce had brought in to fill his vacancy. 

Jason still didn’t think Dick thought more than that, but Dick Grayson was nothing if not optimistic (so long as Bruce wasn’t involved.) 

Regardless, it had been the early stages of Dick trying to work out his issues with Jason, and the ice cream had been an olive branch that Jason refused to take. 

He, in fact, remembered threatening to punch Dick in the face if he kept talking. 

Now, he wouldn’t have done that, wouldn’t have done that with Dick’s shadow looming over him; with the way that Jason had, at that point, still kept two reserve stashes of food under his bed and in the shelves, in case he was kicked out and back on the streets. 

God, he’d needed so much coaxing to even  _ sleep  _ in the  _ bed  _ in his old room. It was honestly pathetic. 

This time, Jason’ll make a new memory at the damn ice cream parlor, and he would do so by watching people’s reactions as they saw the Red Hood eating ice cream in a corner booth with both guns cocked and loaded (well, on safety and in his holster, because  _ safety). _

If domino masks were good for anything, it was eating ice cream when his helmet simply prevented it. 

And Jason hadn’t even stood up from the roof, but ice cream  _ did  _ sound good, and he needed to stop thinking about the past, about the  _ before.  _ Hurt too much, and it always made the Pit just bash harder at the walls in his head. 

_ Just get some fucking ice cream and get over it.  _

The roofs underneath him blur; there’s something he’d never been able to shake when he’d come back, about being in the air, a bird in flight - even if it was something he’d never be the best at, it was where he was at home. 

He wasn’t a bird anymore. Flight and all that came with it weren’t his home, not anyone, but his muscle memory never did ask if he cared. 

And, besides, when he’d gotten rid of the ten pounds of muscle bulk, it was incredibly easier to flip through the sky, no longer a Robin and no longer a hunter, a scared seventeen-year-old with new combat skills driven into his muscles when he was in a catatonic state, and now consumed by rage. 

Hey, maybe being eighteen wasn’t any better. His mind was only just coming back. But in his life, two months might as well be four years, because… Because that was how the life of Bats and Birds went. Everything went by slower when everything  _ meant  _ more. 

In their line of work, in their complicated family drama, the slightest change of tone might mean they were back to fighting, or one wrong password might mean you’ve been shut out, and one scoff might mean you’re disappearing for three weeks with no warning, and paired with the observational skills drilled into them, it made a second last an eternity. 

Damn, talk about family issues.  _ Oh, yeah, I died and came back to life so full of vengeance that I broke into a tower on the other side of the country to beat my Replacement to near death, and then realized I begrudgingly respected him. And my adoptive father was never actually happy I came back to life and to work out my daddy issues I took over Gotham’s criminal empire. Good times.  _

Yeah, complicated life indeed. Complicated life that couldn’t be solved as easily as he wanted it too, and soaring through the air in a leather jacket and body armor wasn’t doing anything to  _ simplify  _ it, but sometimes, complications were just facts he lived with. 

Complications: his grappling hook wasn’t in his belt anymore, mostly due to the object being bulky and Jason having rage-cleaned everything in his apartment after dropping a cake he was baking, and there was a building two-stories higher than him coming up. 

That meant his only option was down because the upcoming building didn’t  _ have  _ a conveniently placed, rickety fire escape to scamper down. 

Jason wasn’t a fan of the ground. The streets themselves made sense to him, but it reminded him too much of being a child, and for some reason, he always tried to shrink in on himself, even though he was the most likely person to be  _ avoided.  _ Shrink in on himself, try to hide, make sure that no one saw him. 

He wasn’t 4’8 anymore. He was 6’3 and  _ really  _ needed to get out of the habit of trying to seem smaller than he was - with actual meat on his bones, the effect was completely lost, out of place, and awkward, as though he still didn’t know whose body he was in. 

And maybe he didn’t. 

Time had its effects, on everyone, on the city, but sometimes, for a split second, it would wind back and put you five years and two feet shorter and no death sentence hanging heavy on your shoulders. 

Jason grunted, pushing down the feeling and pushing his broad shoulders out; there weren’t that many people on the streets this late at night, and he felt a twinge of worry that the ice cream shop wouldn’t even be open. 

But it was  _ Gotham,  _ and it was no secret that Gotham’s darling angels all had sweet tooths. He was pretty sure even Bruce dropped into restaurants in-cowl every once in a while, though usually with a bird at his back. 

_ Robin,  _ usually, from the over-eccentric pun-filled original, to the angry, brutal (academic) Robin Jason became, to the calculating, pants-wearing Robin he toted around now. 

_ A good soldier,  _ Jason’s mind hissed, letting the wonder to the thought slip out as he remembered that was because Bruce went through soldiers like one went through Sharpies, throwing them out when they weren’t any good anymore. 

He wondered how long this bird would last. 

Maybe he’d been trained better than Jason, but there was a recklessness, a  _ magic  _ that came to being Robin, that made all the danger go away; it made you invulnerable. 

If only that were true. And Jason thought he’d taught the babybird his lesson back at Titans Tower, the kid looking at him with broken bones and  _ fear  _ and everything a babybird needed to leave the nest. 

So why,  _ why  _ did the kid keep doing it? Why did Jason’s  _ Replacement  _ refuse to fucking learn? The golden R was nothing short of a death sentence, of getting disappointed, of death, of the life-path that would never leave any of them alone. 

Jason had tried giving up being Hood, before. He tried. It went about as well as you’d expect, the  _ one last time  _ becoming another four, another ten until he’d forgotten all about the decision to quit. Vigilantism had its addiction, its allure, even if Jason had died because of it and his own stupidity. 

The streets were too narrow. The streetlights hadn’t been replaced in at least fifteen years, and the bulbs had all gone out - whether because they’d outlived their usefulness or because they’d been broken, Jason didn’t know, didn’t care - but he could still see the road clearly, thanks to his helmet’s night vision, and his own familiarity. 

It did blind him, though, when the shop came into view, the only business still open in the middle of the night in the bad part of town, if only because sweet-toothed vigilantes protected it no other. 

He wondered if Dick had brought his replacement here, too. Offered him that olive branch, and maybe his replacement took it. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it was still something Dick had only tried with him. And not that Jason wanted that, of course, but he knew he was the first one to take Dick’s mantle, knew that he was the one Dick hated. 

Maybe he treated the replacement better.  _ Everyone  _ was always better than Jason fucking Todd, after all. 

Ugh, whatever. Jason snarled to himself, the familiar motion of making faces and sounds to himself grounding in itself- not something anyone had  _ taught  _ him, but something he had realized long ago helped far more than outside stimuli. 

If he made his own, it was like he controlled the situation, and his emotions followed suit. Quite effective, though a little odd to be sighing to himself in the middle of a battle. 

Luckily, he was only in the street, finding the latch on each side of his helmet to take the damnedest thing off - couldn’t see anything with night vision on and couldn’t see a damn thing without it, so he supposed it was best to use his actual, physical eyes. 

Wild, right? 

Jason tucked the helmet under his arm, blinking to adjust to the sudden lack of light and to make sure he wasn’t leaving his back totally exposed - a force of habit - and was grateful for the domino covering his eyes. 

Not because of his identity, because he was legally dead and he didn’t look like a dead fifteen-year-old boy anymore, but because the cold bit into the skin around his face and his domino kept him warm.

The cold felt too much like dying. 

(And, of course, it always agitated old wounds, bringing up phantom pains and aches from being, you know.) 

Regardless, he moved to the side, the gothic front of the ice cream parlor against his back; the windows were well-maintained, menu items and deals written in chalk marker, which must’ve been hell on the mind to write backward from inside. 

Inside, of course, matched the same as the outside, and a little bell chimed when Jason entered; the entire place was themed after the whole dark minimalist thing, and it had taken up a vigilante theme to it in later years. 

It was always weird - the best way to keep track of who's a hero and a villain in this city was to see what the menu items in locally-owned shops were like. 

The left side of the board was always heroes, and the right side of the board was always villains - characterized by the fonts and colors of chalk on the hand-written signs, an attempt to be quaint, though it didn’t quite go with the rest of the ice cream shops aesthetic. 

He was pleasantly surprised to find, when he walked up to the counter, that he was on the left side of the board.  _ Red Hood Raspberry Swirl.  _ Not the most creative name in the world, but not the worst, he supposed. 

(And there had been some horrible names, based on how much the city disliked certain people. The Joker didn’t even have a menu item anymore.) 

No one was standing behind the counter. A risky move, in Gotham, but then again, who would rob an ice cream shop? Not like it was likely to make them any richer than they already were, of course, so it was that blind logic that allowed it, he supposed. 

Jason tapped the bell, glancing between the chalk-written ice cream flavors and the little engraved tags in front of the in-set ice cream boxes, finding his namesake. Waiting until the attendant rounded the corner from the backroom and just  _ stared  _ at him. 

Jason raised a brow, though the attendant couldn’t see that due to the domino mask, glancing at the helmet under his arms and giving a hesitant smile. “Uh, um, what would you like today, Mr. Hood?” 

“My namesake,” was all Jason said, gesturing toward the ice cream container with a jab of his thumb. He was  _ not  _ saying  _ Red Hood Raspberry Swirl  _ out loud. 

The attendant nodded, already opening up the glass case, and procuring an ice cream scoop from  _ somewhere  _ behind the counter - there was a ghost of a smile over the kid's face, the kind of giddy smile one got when meeting someone they looked up to. They couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. 

Better they were working here than anyone else in Gotham. 

“Uh - um, waffle cone or regular cone, or - or, um, waffle bowl or regular bowl?” 

Well, Jason’s pride said he wasn’t going to be licking an ice cream cone in the middle of the night. It just - it felt - it didn’t feel right. Not that many things did, anymore. “Waffle bowl. Say, kid, how long you been working here?” 

“Three - three months.” 

“Were you working anywhere before that?” 

“N - No. Trying to, um, just payin’ for things and all that.” 

Jason nodded, catching a glance at the kid’s name tag on their hideous uniform. They deserved a raise  _ just  _ for that uniform.  _ Amanda B.  _ “Well, you’re doin’ good, kid.” 

Their smile widened, and Jason resisted the urge to smile himself - sometimes, being a hero had its perks. Like people not being afraid of him anymore - at least, the people that mattered weren’t.

When they looked back up at him, they were holding three large scoops of ice cream in a waffle bowl, grabbing a plastic spoon out of a cup on the top of the ice cream freezer (counter?) to jam into the raspberry swirl. 

They seemed like they were forgetting something. 

“Doesn’t buying ice cream usually inform paying?” Jason asked, tentatively taking the ice cream from Amanda (if the name tag was to be trusted). 

Amanda shook her head, face flushed. “Uh - um, store policy. Robins don’t gotta pay.” 

“I’m not a Robin.” Not anymore at least. Why did it hurt as much as it did? 

Amanda laughed nervously, scratching at the nape of their neck, past the collar of that hideous blue-and-black uniform. Nightwing chic, huh? “We never changed the wording of the original policy. Um, nowadays it encompasses more like - Robins, and Batgirls, and Batman, and Nightwing, and Red Hood, and Black Bat, and Spoiler, and, um, yeah.” 

Jason smiled at them. Ah, time to make them happy with his family drama. “Yeah, you can keep it like  _ former Robins and Batgirls (and Batman) don’t have to pay.  _ That’s more all-encompassing.” 

Amanda’s eyes went wide from where she was standing, and Jason beamed, an unfamiliar sight for the familiar Red Hood, and went and sat in the very back of the ice cream parlor. 

Look, he wasn’t going to take a bowl of ice cream out on patrol, and Gotham was mysteriously quiet. It could afford for him to take a few minutes. The new Batman and Robin would be on it if anything important, life-upending things happened. 

_ New Robin.  _

Ugh, why did Jason keep coming back to that? He knew there was a new Robin. He  _ knew that.  _ The Pit whispered, bashing against the walls in his mind, but the other thing that came of it was the feeling of the kid’s throat under his neck, the blood on his hands. 

The way he’d left before the bruising set in so that he didn’t have to see it. 

The way the little bird went and kept the mask and cape on like he simply couldn’t take it off now that he’d had a taste of the life. 

And, really, Jason didn’t blame him. 

Before he’d died, he thought he was going to be Robin forever. He thought he was going to Bruce’s son forever, that he’d be the second half of the Dynamic Duo, as though he could ever live up to the shadow Dick Grayson had left looming over him, even in this ice cream shop. 

_ You’re here to get ice cream. Not think about the past.  _

Jason grit his teeth, nearly slamming the waffle bowl into the table before realizing that he couldn’t break the bowl. He was sitting in the back, with the best view of the shop and the door; there was a back exit, too, and he could easily jump the counter from over here if he needed to make a break for it. 

He didn’t put it past the Bat to try and arrest him in an ice cream shop. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that happened, and  _ that  _ was saying something about their lives. 

That didn’t happen. 

Jason ate his ice cream in peace, and found that he did, in fact, like the raspberry swirl - a little sweet for his taste, but recently all he’d eaten was spaghetti leftovers from the last time he’d made home-made pasta and alfredo sauce, so his sweet tooth was a little off. 

_ Robin gives me magic.  _

Jason closed his eyes, the brain freeze  _ nothing  _ comparative to the same damn phrase that kept coming to mind.

_ Robin gives me magic.  _

Robin did give him magic. Robin gave him a sweet tooth and the ability to  _ have  _ a sweet tooth, an olive branch from Dickie fucking Grayson, gave him - gave him everything. And he’d died. And he’d been replaced. 

So why was there always nostalgia in his chest? 

Being Robin got him  _ killed.  _ Being Robin got him beaten to near-death and blown up to finish the job. Being Robin gave him home just for it to be taken away and - and - and - 

And dying was his fault. 

_ Victim-blaming,  _ Roy had shrugged;  _ you blame yourself because you don’t know who else to blame anymore.  _

_ I know who to blame,  _ Jason had said, back then, bitter and angry (as though he wasn’t still that way). 

He didn’t know who to blame. Vaguely, yes, but in practice, no. 

He knew the Joker was the one who beat him, who rigged that warehouse up to explode. That the clown had killed him to break the Bat, in that fucking feud they would never end because Bruce would never cross the line to kill the clown once and for all. 

But he didn’t blame the Joker. The Joker was his nightmares, was the fear in his heart that he never truly got rid of, the laughter ringing in his ears whenever a ticking in a warehouse started; the one person Jason wanted dead more than any other. 

The Joker was a madman who would’ve killed any other kid in the Robin suit. 

Batman didn’t save him, but Jason had never assumed he would. He’d  _ wanted  _ Bruce to save him, had wished it with his dying breath, but he forgave Bruce before the bomb had even blown. It wasn’t Bruce’s fault. 

Bruce could only do so much. Bruce could only train him so much. Bruce could never train the reckless anger out of him that he’d let slip when he wasn’t under piles of homework and bad parental figures. 

School could only keep him entertained for so long, the more information he learned burning a hole in his head when he knew it was wrong. His teachers were wrong. They were all teaching the rich and the famous and they  _ lied  _ when they told them all about the history of Gotham and how it formed and how Crime Alley came about. 

The anger, the reckless anger that sprang from teaching  _ himself  _ about Gotham, about its residents, about himself, about  _ everything _ , that was what got him killed. 

After all, why the hell else would he have gone after a mother that clearly didn’t want him? She’d told him out.  _ Sheila Haywood never wanted him.  _

Suddenly, the raspberry swirl tasted bitter on his tongue, and Jason twisted his tongue to his cheek to keep from cracking a goddamn tooth, but all he got was a mouthful of blood as the ice cream melted on his tongue. 

Eating ice cream wasn’t supposed to be this much of a trip down memory lane. At least he got it for free, right?  _ Right?  _

Before Jason could get lost in his thoughts again, his death anniversary approaching far closer than he’d first assumed when he looked at the date on the menu (ah, yeah, that explained why he was getting all bitter. He’d forgotten it was the middle of January.), the bell above the door chimed again, and someone walked in. 

He should be surprised. Almost no one went  _ out  _ to eat ice cream this late at night if they weren’t already out. 

Black hair and blue eyes. Make-up nearly covering a black eye. Clothes far too nice for someone who lived in this area of town. 

Jason’s breath stopped short, the Pit flaring, flaring, bashing against his skull, his vision going green. 

Tim Drake. Timothy Jackson Drake. The third Robin.  _ Robin.  _ His replacement. 

_ Replacement.  _

Jason tensed, but Replacement didn’t seem to notice him yet, bags under his eyes far more visible than they should’ve been with concealer practically caked on; the attendant was still at the counter, and gave him the standard customer service voice. 

Jason couldn’t see either of their faces. 

He didn’t know if he wanted to. 

Of  _ course  _ this had to happen tonight. Of course it had to happen right now. On the worst night he’d had in two months of the stupid pain in his chest, collapsing his lungs worse than getting them punctured ever did. 

He almost wished he was dying again, instead of having all the memories of dying again, instead of all the pain that came with knowing he’d been replaced and that he didn’t,  _ he didn’t blame the kid.  _

The kid,  _ Tim, Replacement,  _ he’d taken up the mantle because Batman needed another soldier in his war. Replacement became Robin because Robin made magic wherever he went and someone needed to wear the damn cape. 

_ Batman  _ took in another Robin because his old one didn’t measure up. Not in life, not in death, and sure as hell not now. 

It was then, of course, with Jason’s eyes fixated on Tim, that the kid looked over, and his eyes widened, staring at Jason with shock and - and  _ fear.  _

Jason didn’t say a word. He and the kid hadn’t seen each other since Titans Tower, and Jason had been perfectly fine occupying his own territory without the Bat or the Bird interfering in his plans. 

He looked better. 

Of course, he hadn’t been beaten to hell and back, so there was that, and - and he was back in Gotham, for one, and… And Jason didn’t know what to do. 

This wasn’t planned. Jason didn’t know what to say, to say anything at all, to go back to eating his ice cream. And if there was anything Jason didn’t like, it was  _ not knowing.  _

The Pit flared, the ate on his anger, his frustration, his shock, its lithe grip firm in his stomach, twisting all of his emotions green and sickly and  _ vengeful  _ and - and - 

And Jason wasn’t a vessel for it. Jason wouldn’t, he wouldn’t,  _ he wouldn’t  _ black out again. He wasn’t a pawn! He wasn’t he wasn’t he wasn’t!

“...Hello.” 

Jason’s still staring at him, his lungs not working properly, his lungs filled with a green mist that wanted to strangle his control from the inside out and he couldn’t - he couldn’t - 

He couldn’t  _ fucking breakdown  _ with the babybird in front of him. He couldn’t. 

He didn’t clip Tim’s wings and that was on him. That was on him and he wasn’t - he couldn’t -  _ Tim couldn’t talk to him.  _

The Pit wouldn’t allow it. 

And still, with Jason’s eyes widened and his fists held so tightly that the spoon snapped in his grip, Tim sat down, on the chair opposite Jason, hesitant and worried and  _ fearful  _ and rightfully so.  _ Replacement replacement replacement. That’s Robin. That’s  _ **_Robin._ **

“I - I know you don’t want to hurt me.” Tim was grasping at straws, ready to bolt at any moment, the hesitation flashing in his eyes enough so that Jason wanted to reach over and  _ strangle  _ it out of him until Robin was well and truly dead like it  _ should  _ have been when Jason was buried. “I - I know something happened -” 

“Nothing happened!” Jason snapped, and only then did he realize he hadn’t realized how much his  _ jaw  _ hurt, how his mouth still tasted of blood, and if he tried to grit his teeth anymore, he’d be cracking a tooth or something. 

Tim flinched but continued, a steal sheen over his eyes - steeling himself for his own words, for Jason’s reaction, for the injuries that might happen or having to finally fucking admit that Jason didn’t come back right, that he was a lost cause. 

And maybe he was. 

_ He was a lost cause.  _

“I know that… That you came back,” Tim said, avoiding eye contact, but glancing at Jason’s hands - not tracking their movements, not consciously, but trying to look at Jason regardless. Jason wouldn’t want to look at him either. “I know that I replaced you.” 

“For your own good,” Jason started, and he’d be lying if he said his voice didn’t crack - all it did was make green flash across his vision again. “I wouldn’t bring it up. Get  _ out  _ of here, Re - repl -  _ Tim.  _ Get  _ out  _ of here.” 

Tim didn’t move an inch, though he straightened up - not as though he’d been slouching. “No.” The way he said it, it was like  _ leaving  _ to  _ keep his goddamn life  _ was giving up on Jason.

_ Lost cause.  _ Tim should just  _ leave him be,  _ and he could get the Pit under control and the hurt bubbling up under his ribcage could be satiated by a few nights of patrol and maybe making some homemade pasta when he got back to his apartment. 

_ “Go away if you know what’s good for you.”  _

“J - Jason, I -” 

“Stop talking!”

Tim shut his mouth, abruptly cutting himself off, subconsciously cowering in on himself, like Jason was going to just - to just 

_ Don’t think about it.  _ Don’t think about it and maybe it would go away and maybe he could tolerate Tim and control himself but not if - not if he was thinking like that and his veins  _ burned,  _ they  _ burned,  _ the Pit trying to get its tendrils through his mind, through the little reserve of control and sense that Jason had gained back. 

“I’m… I’m going to quietly sit here,” Tim mumbled under his breath, still rigid against the cheap metal chair, not reaching to grab his ice cream at all. 

Tim didn’t say another word. 

And Jason didn’t tear his eyes away, staring at Tim, his  _ replacement,  _ all the little mannerisms that weren’t - that weren’t Bruce’s, the way his hair was dirtier than Jason had ever allowed his to be. Tim was  _ short. _

Tim didn’t share many of Jason’s own mannerisms, save for trying to curl in on himself - a habit Jason had been trying to kick once he’d come back from the dead with a lack of long-lasting childhood malnourishment. 

Tim didn’t fidget, didn’t fumble; instead, he was still as a board, unmoving save for the slight rise and fall of his chest, no doubt trained to be nearly undetectable and noticeable within any given group of people. 

Except for other Bats. 

Jason wasn’t a bat anymore. Didn’t wear the insignia, didn’t do anything other than disappoint the people that raised him because they were the same fucking people that replac - replaced -  _ replaced  _ him. 

Jason was going to vomit.

The urge came on suddenly, a new feeling as the Pit retreated from his head and into his body when it realized that he wasn’t - he wasn’t going to - 

He could snap Tim’s neck. Just like that, he could reach out and snap Tim’s neck and the little bird wouldn’t have wings anymore, no more singing as the night dawned and the bat came out to play. 

His fists were balled up so tightly that his gloves were going to snap if he wasn’t careful, far too much pressure being put on the fabric, far too much pressure on  _ him,  _ he couldn’t - he couldn’t - not with - He couldn’t be trusted with another human life and certainly not Tim’s. 

True to Jason’s request, Tim didn’t say a word, analyzing his every move, the smooth calculation that Jason had never mastered flicking past his eyes; Jason had been far better at figuring things out on the fly, melding both field and detective work into one melting cauldron that never quite ended well. 

Maybe that’s why Jason had died and Tim hadn’t. 

He wasn’t going to vomit. Jason didn’t mean to, though his fist immediately buried itself in his stomach, nausea retreating as he gasped, the body armor absorbing enough of the hit - but leaving enough that it would bruise later. 

Bruise just enough to be a reminder.

He could kill Tim. In a flash, Tim could be on the floor, lifeless, dead, his replacement dealt with once and for all. A wrong righted, a mantle dead like it should have been. 

But he didn’t. And why wasn’t he? 

Why did he want to fight the Pit so much? 

The Pit was a malevolent thing. It took a sane mind and healed the body, leaving the mind in shambles. It tore up every resentment that ran through your soul and made it the only thing that kept your heart beating. It was flawed. 

It was  _ flawed  _ and Jason was  _ flawed  _ and Talia’s voice echoed in his head, directing his rage, giving him something to focus on, something to  _ channel  _ so that he didn’t kill himself in his blind anger. 

“What… uh, what ice cream flavor did you get?” 

Just like before, Tim’s voice was quiet, measured, gauging Jason’s reaction more than the question itself; maybe Tim could see the war in Jason’s eyes, no doubt the Pit simmering right under the surface, snarling and snapping to be released and to right everything Jason’s sane mind deemed  _ wrong _ . 

Gotham. All of Gotham was wrong. 

The city screamed of filth and decay and murder, a cesspool of all that was wrong in the world concentrated in one area, one city of millions glimmering so long as you didn’t look too close. 

Tim by far wasn’t the worst of the bunch. 

But Tim was the one that tried to revive a dead boy’s name before he was even cold in his coffin, before he’d even clawed his goddamn way out of that godforsaken hellhole. 

Tim replaced him. Tim replaced  _ Robin.  _ Tim had taken Robin from him and Tim, rich boy extraordinaire, hadn’t done a goddamn thing to earn it other than making puppy dog eyes at Bruce Wayne, the king of child soldiers. 

Jason had always had something to measure up to. Dickie fucking Grayson was always looming over him, disappointed in Jason’s lack of  _ everything  _ that Dick could always do better. Tim had a mantle that wasn’t given to him. Tim was  _ accepted  _ in the same way Jason had never been. 

Tim replaced him. 

Jason hadn’t been there to be Robin anymore. Jason hadn’t been there. He didn’t even know where he’d been. It was hazy. 

It was funny, his last thoughts being  _ it’s okay, Bruce. It’s okay. I’m sorry,  _ and his first conscious thought being,  _ did he make it?  _

It was  _ funny,  _ waking up in his own coffin in a blind terror and yet not remembering the rest of it before the Pit. 

It was like he was only allowed to remember the things that had hurt him the most. Maybe he was. Maybe he was - maybe he was only allowed to remember the things fate wanted him to remember, to get him this much closer to snapping, and snapping Tim’s neck in the process. 

_ You’re a curse upon this world.  _

A dead boy walking and praying that the suit he’d used to wear would guide him, whether in rage or in life. 

_ A dead boy.  _

“Red Hood raspberry swirl,” Jason choked out, trying to keep his voice even in his throat and failing miserably - he didn’t even fucking know what his body was doing now. It didn’t matter so long as his hands stayed by his sides and not on Tim. 

Tim’s lip quirked up at the corner, far too tense for a smile. They both knew how this could end. And they both knew that - that it was on the both of them if it did. 

Though, Jason knew it would, logically, be his fault. He would kill Tim. But he  _ told  _ Tim that the replacement needed to  _ leave  _ and he  _ didn’t.  _ That wasn’t on him, right?  _ Right?  _ It wasn’t his problem if the kid just had a deathwish? 

A deathwish. 

“I, uh, I got Neapolitan Nightwing.” Tim held his bowl (regular bowl, not a waffle bowl) up, and as promised, there was the Neapolitan - it was dyed blue, though, which made Jason jump to fifteen different conclusions, but at least they knew to get the colors right.

Jason’s favorite flavor was Neapolitan. 

Maybe he hadn’t gotten it solely  _ because  _ of Nightwing - Dick Grayson’s shadow once again making itself known. 

Jason nodded, swallowing down everything bitter in his mouth - from the taste of blood to the lingering sweet of his ice cream. Raspberry. Right, he should taste raspberry. 

When Jason didn’t say anything back, Tim awkwardly placed the bowl back on the table, and hesitantly lifted his spoon to continue (start?) eating. 

What was he  _ doing?  _

What did Tim think was a  _ good idea  _ about any of this? Jason wasn’t - he wasn’t - he wasn’t in the right headspace and he knew it, and he wanted to tear the kid’s throat out at the same time as he wanted to swaddle him and tell him that the cape he wore with pride was nothing more than a curse, and either option was the tip of his tongue. 

Everything about Tim’s movements was cautious - at the very least, he knew how dangerous Jason was, and wasn’t intending on letting Jason get the drop on him again. 

They both knew it was more than just surprise that had Tim losing that battle, but surprise had certainly helped. 

Tim was closest to the door, though he never glanced at it - instead, Jason tracked his eye movements to the reflective silver behind the counter, no doubt watching his exit as closely as he was watching Jason’s reactions. 

What did he  _ do?  _

Because Tim was opposite him, Jason couldn’t bolt out. No, no, and he didn’t know if he wanted to, in the first place - Tim was giving him an olive branch. 

That wasn’t the first time that had happened in this particular ice cream parlor - there was something about it, something that brought Jason to grasping at straws to explain it. 

He didn’t  _ want  _ an olive branch. He didn’t! He didn’t, he desperately, desperately,  _ desperately  _ didn’t want to  _ want  _ an olive branch. 

He supposed one couldn’t hurt, though, so long as Tim didn’t aggravate the Pit too much and Jason didn’t make any sudden movements. 

Tim ate his ice cream in silence, occasionally glancing up at Jason. 

Jason went back to eating his ice cream, too, letting the olive branch sit between them and grow in their silence. 

They couldn’t talk. Not yet. But… but maybe…

Maybe Jason would figure it out. For now, though, they would eat ice cream, and that was enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> so ! we're going to ignore that this doc was named "ice cream?? get ice cream???" for the longest time. comments?? thoughts? i thrive off them ! my tumblr is @lacklusterdc if anyone's interested >:3


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